The army intends to store all these rounds in ammo storage facilities at both Camp Stanley in Boerne, Texas and the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky.

As the solicitation implies, the 7.62x39mm and the 9x18mm Makarov are not standard-issue in the U.S. military or NATO.

Rather they are calibers developed by the former Soviet Union which are now commonly used by civilian shooters in the United States.

The 7.62x39mm in particular is extremely popular with private gun owners due to the wide availability and affordability of both military surplus ammo and firearms chambered for this round, such as the AK-47 and the SKS.

Handguns chambered for the 9x18mm Makarov, such as the FEG PA-63, are common, inexpensive imports.

According to this 2012 request, the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) wanted to find a vendor who could “reach around the world at any given moment to gather and provide multiple types of weapons and weapon parts.”

The extensive list of desired weapons included firearms popular with civilians such as the aforementioned AK-47, 1911s, M1903 Springfields, Walther PP/PPKs (another common import), and other “commercial and para-military weapons.”

This solicitation also asked for “books, manuals, tools, and gauges” pertaining to the firearms.

Headquartered in New Jersey, ARDEC is primarily known for its research in advanced weapons such as lasers and nanotechnology.

These unusual requests prompt the question as to why the U.S. Army, and especially the army’s advanced weapons research and development division, needs a vast quantity of non-NATO rounds and decades-old – sometimes even 100-year-old – firearms popular with civilians for worldwide deployment “at any given notice.”

The ARDEC request in particular seems too broad.

Are World War I era M1903 Springfields really that common in today’s battlefields, or even the popular CZ-52 imports which have been retired from Czechoslovakian service since 1982?

Are these obsolete weapons used that frequently in current world conflicts to warrant specific mention in an army acquisition request?

Do century-old firearms really need to be shipped all around the world for “research and development?”